Evaluation YCN collaboration

My collaboration was with Kirsty Hardingham. Kirsty was an enthusiastic partner from day one and open to which brief we went ahead with.  Fortunately we were both gravitating towards the Heinz Salad Cream brief.  The brief struck us as one that we could have some fun with and also as a ‘campaign’ style brief the outcomes could be both print and/or digital.

Our roles

We settled into definite roles within our partnership quite naturally - My role was Concept development/Project manager where as Kirsty was responsible for designing and producing practical outcomes such as the posters, website and chip cone.

The benefits of collaboration

Kirsty has much stronger Illustrator skills than me so she concentrated on producing a lot of the art work where as I focussed on the After Effects moving image and the Indesign boards.  In this respect we complimented each other well.  We were also able to bounce ideas of each other which strengthened the outcomes.   

Certain tasks were better executed in collaboration such as the photoshoot which we did with Jenny Sneap from Vis Com.  We needed several pairs of hands to get the photographs we needed.   

The disadvantages of collaboration

The only frustration from my point of view was that she did not come to two of the early crits/ workshops which meant the tone of voice of the campaign was initially directed by me.  I was concerned about this as I wanted the brief to be as collaborative as possible.  I also had to address the problem of  managing the situation without creating friction.  

On a positive note though whenever we agreed actions with deadlines she always delivered and during the last week we really pulled together to submit the boards. 

Conclusion

We were able to reach agreement on the design direction and tone of voice early on in the project.  Overall we planned and coordinated the project effectively.  We were both happy with the outcome we submitted a couple of days before the deadline.

Evaluation- Product, Range

My husband, David runs a guitar school and has been asking me for some time to re-brand the school.  Following a conversation with him we were discussed the possibility of a journal for the students.  Also he has started taking the business into primary schools and as a result needs some promotional material suitable for Schools, Head teachers and parents.

The outcome

I have asked several students and parents for feedback about the logo and prospectus and have received some very favourable comments.  The kids think its ‘cool’ and want a t-shirt!  The parents think it is representative of David and the school.

Learning outcomes

This has been challenging in terms of limiting the ‘range’ of what I could achieve within this brief.  Also the whole project has led to us developing the business as well and it has been difficult to keep focussed on the Module dead line.  I have kept reminding myself that this is the foundation and now the work can continue.

I have also challenged my practical skills by applying some book binding techniques.

The other challenge has been trying to produce something special whilst still being able to reproduce the prospectus/journal and leaflets economically.  I have accommodated this by designing products for the brief and then sourcing cheaper short run digital printing for the real products.  Going forward I plan to screen-print the posters to keep costs down over the summer.

Conclusion

Overall the whole project has been positive in terms of contributing to a business that has real meaning to me and also in terms of the learning outcomes. My design direction is becoming more defined as I enjoy Branding and Identity and also the layout skills I have employed.

OUGD203 Evaluation

BA (Hons.) GRAPHIC DESIGN LEVEL  05

Module Code   OUGD203

Module Title DESIGN Practice 2

END OF MODULE SELF-EVALUATION

NAME Lisa Whitaker BLOG. ADDRESS http://l-whitaker1013.blogspot.com

1. What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them?

• Indesign software skills – starting to find my way around this software and linking files from photoshop and Illustrator

• Type and layout – My eye for layout is definitely improving after the Design module with Graham.  Thinking about readability, hierarchy and grid layout more effectively.

• Collaboration – getting the right balance between project management and not taking over to much.

2. What approaches to/methods of design production have you developed and how have they informed your design development process?

• I have re-visted book binding techniques and would have liked more time to extend this.  Limitation with printing/time meant could only try Japanese stab binding, screw posts and perfect binding.

• Improving vectoring skills in Ilustrator has opened up more opportunities for my design outcomes.

3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?

• Extensive research and analysis has enabled me to focus on a ‘real’ product and problem

• Improving attention to type and layout

• Project planning and tenacity has allowed me to develop this brief extensively

• Growing confidence in asking for help from experts eg Book binding at Vernon Street

• I am researching more Innovative Graphic Design which is contributing to stronger design outcomes

4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these in the future?

• Found it difficult Project managing everything we had to do since Easter however this was partly down to me having too much of a break at Easter!

• I have not blogged as much project development as I have been progressing along which created a bottleneck, giving me a problem hitting the deadline.

5. Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these?

• I still need to make time to  put pen to paper more with editorial layouts, logo development and storyboarding.  

• I do make action lists and plan my time in my notebook however I have not documented this on the blog.  I want to find a digital method which can be easily uploaded to Blogger so I get credit for this. 

• I tried to achieve too much on both YCN and Product briefs which meant that I did not execute some of the outcomes as effectively as I could.  

• Think about what is really being asked for as an outcome ie with Product I spent a lot of time making products which in the end were not required at hand in.  maybe could have digitally mocked up more of the products.

6.How would you grade yourself on the following areas: 

(please indicate using an ‘x’)  

5= excellent, 4 = very good, 3 = good, 2 = average, 1 = poor

1 2 3 4 5

Attendance 4

Punctuality 4

Motivation 5

Commitment 5

Quantity of work produced 5

Quality of work produced 3

Contribution to the group  5

The evaluation of your work is an important part of the assessment criteria and represents a percentage of the overall grade. It is essential that you give yourself enough time to complete your written evaluation fully and with appropriate depth and level of self-reflection. If you have any questions relating to the self evaluation process speak to a member of staff as soon as possible.

Contacting agencies

I have been holding back from contacting agencies as I had not designed my Creative CV or come up with a portfolio I was happy with.  Yesterday I completely focussed on designing my brand, CV and also created a Cargo collective website.  They are still not perfect however I dont want to leave this any longer as if I do I will end up not having any contact with studios over the summer.


The Cargo Account is:  two strings design

I have also contacted the following studios attaching my CV and linking to the Cargo account.

Michael Freemantle - Head of Design at 10 Associates (Studied at Leeds)

Tim Miller at the Space People (Jane connection)

Paul Kerfoot at Bulletpoint Design ( A friend knows this guy in Bradford)

I plan to contact

Elmwood (Chris Jackson and Rob Skelly) once Fred oks it.

I have also arranged a meeting with a freelance designer called John Polley who lives near me to look at his work (he doesn't have a website!) and get some feedback on mine.

To be continued... 

A reply for The Space People already!

Update

1. I have a meeting with Tim at The Space People on Monday 18th June to visit the studio and discuss possible work experience.

2. I have a meeting with Micael Freemantle at 10 Associates booked for Thursday 21st June to visist studio an dhave a chat about my Design practice.

3.  I did not get a response off Bulletpoint.

Task 5 More Brand me development and Cards

After having a chat with Jane and going over the cards and logo for me I decided to re-visit this with fresh eyes.  The CV I had started to design was beginning to be too complex (above) and I was starting to fall out with the original 2 strings design.


Getting the colour right.

The Shade I originally chose looked too 'faded' and blue when printed out it was not vibrant enough.  Using the Pantone swatches I chose the shade I wanted which was DE 238-3

Jane gave me a couple of idea which was actually revisiting a route I had already gone down - looking at two intersecting bubbles and where they meet is the common ground of 'skills' that bring from my Finance career into my Design career so with this in mind I re-designed the logo as follows:

This is the first layout for the CV.  The Baskerville typeface is not readable on screen so I decided to try a different one.  I have been working with Century Gothic which has simple line and large bowls.  This worked better so I tried applying this to the logo as well.   also experimented with some other Gothic typefaces

Proposed final card:

Update

I chose four different designs for the front of the card as Moo offer up to ten design for free.  

Open publication - Free publishing - More business cards

Despite all my text being in the 'safe' area I do think some of the text come out too near the edge.

Open publication - Free publishing - More business cards

I have had the cards printed at Moo however they have a yellow print mark on every card.  When I contacted Moo they immediately refunded my money and offered to print them again free of charge!

A letterhead

Task 4 Creative CV development

The following Issuu document demonstrates the CV development.  the first being the 'typebased' CV we did in Type with Graeme.  I had initially been using baskerville a a typeface but found this did not work well on digital PDFs from a readability point of view so I switched to Century Gothic.
The last page is the CV I have used in emails to Studios:

Open publication - Free publishing - More cv

There will be no stopping me now ...

And a response at 9.45am the following morning!  Nothing nailed on but a reply and a name none the less( How exciting !)